Etiquette, Emily Post [read people like a book txt] 📗
- Author: Emily Post
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There must be plenty of clothes hangers in the closets. For women a few hat stands, and for men trouser hangers and the coat hangers that have a bar across the shoulder piece.
It is unnecessary to add that every bureau drawer should be looked into to see that nothing belonging to the family is filling the space which should belong to the guest, and that the white paper lining the bottom is new. Curtains and sofa pillows must, of course, be freshly laundered; the furniture, floor, walls and ceiling unmarred and in perfect order.
When bells are being installed in new houses they should be on cords and hung at the side of the bed. Light switches should be placed at the side of the door going into the room and bathroom. It is scarcely practical to change the wiring in old houses; but it can at least be seen that the bells work.
People who like strong perfumes often mistakenly think they are giving pleasure in filling all the bedroom drawers with pads heavily scented. Instead of feeling pleasure, some people are made almost sick! But all people (hay-fever patients excepted) love flowers, and vases of them beautify rooms as nothing else can. Even a shabby little room, if dustlessly clean and filled with flowers, loses all effect of shabbiness and is "inviting" instead.
In a hunting country, there should be a bootjack and boothooks in the closet.
Guest rooms should have shutters and dark shades for those who like to keep the morning sun out. The rooms should also, if possible, be away from the kitchen end of the house and the nursery.
A shortcoming in many houses is the lack of a newspaper, and the thoughtful hostess who has the morning paper sent up with each breakfast tray, or has one put at each place on the breakfast table, deserves a halo.
At night a glass and a thermos pitcher of water should be placed by the bed. In a few very specially appointed houses, a small glass-covered tray of food is also put on the bed table, fruit or milk and sandwiches, or whatever is marked on the guest card.
The Guest Card
A clever device was invented by Mrs. Gilding whose palatially appointed house is run with the most painstaking attention to every one's comfort. On the dressing-table in each spare room at Golden Hall is a card pad with a pencil attached to it. But if the guest card is used, a specimen is given below.
Needless to say the cards are used only in huge houses that, because of their size, are necessarily run more like a clubhouse than as a "home."
In every house, the questions below are asked by the hostess, though the guests may not readily perceive the fact. At bedtime she always asks: "Would you like to come down to breakfast, or will you have it in your room?" If the guest says, in her room, she is then asked what she would like to eat. She is also asked whether she cares for milk or fruit or other light refreshment at bedtime, and if there is a special book she would like to take up to her room.
The guest card mentioned above is as follows:
Please Fill This Out Before Going Down To Dinner:
What time do you want to be awakened? .......................Or, will you ring? ..........................................
Will you breakfast up-stairs? ................................
Or down? ....................................................
Underscore Your Order:
Coffee, tea, chocolate, milk,Oatmeal, hominy, shredded wheat,
Eggs, how cooked?
Rolls, muffins, toast,
Orange, pear, grapes, melon.
At Bedtime Will You Take
Hot or cold milk, cocoa, orangeade,Sandwiches, meat, lettuce, jam,
Cake, crackers,
Oranges, apples, pears, grapes.
Besides this list, there is a catalogue of the library with a card, clipped to the cover, saying:
"Following books for room No. X." Then four or six blank lines and a place for the guest's signature.
At The Dinner Hour
Every one goes down to dinner as promptly as possible and the procedure is exactly that of all dinners. If it is a big party, the gentlemen offer their arms to the ladies the host or hostess has designated. At the end of the evening, it is the custom that the hostess suggest going up-stairs, rather than the guests who ordinarily depart after dinner. But etiquette is not very strictly followed in this, and a reasonable time after dinner, if any one is especially tired he or she quite frankly says: "I wonder if you would mind very much if I went to bed?" The hostess always answers: "Why, no, certainly not! I hope you will find everything in your room! If not, will you ring?"
It is not customary for the hostess to go up-stairs with a guest, so long as others remain in her drawing-room. If there is only one lady, or a young girl, the hostess accompanies her to her room, and asks if everything has been thought of for her comfort.
How Guests Are Asked And Received
Many older ladies adhere to former practise and always write personal notes of invitation. All others write or telegraph to people at a distance, and send telephone messages to those nearby.
When a house is to be filled with friends of daughters or sons of the house, the young people in the habit of coming to the house, or young men, whether making a first visit or not, do not need any invitation further than one given them verbally by a daughter, or even a son. But a married couple, or a young girl invited for the first time, should have the verbal invitation of daughter or son seconded by a note or at least a telephone message sent by the mother herself.
Every one is always asked for a specified time. Even a near relative comes definitely for a week, or a month, or whatever period is selected. This is because other plans have to be made by the owners of the house, such as inviting another group of guests, or preparing to go away themselves.
Who Are Asked On House Parties
Excepting when strangers bring influential letters of introduction, or when a relative or very intimate friend recently married is invited with her new husband or his bride, only very large and general house parties include any one who is not an intimate friend.
At least seventy per cent of American house parties are young people, either single or not long married, and, in any event, all those asked to any one party—unless the hostess is a failure (or a genius)—belong to the same social group. Perhaps a more broad-minded attitude prevails among young people in other parts of the country, but wilfully narrow-minded Miss Young New York is very chary of accepting an invitation until she finds out who among her particular friends are also invited. If Mrs. Stranger asks her for a week-end, no matter how much she may like Mrs. Stranger personally, she at once telephones two or three of her own group. If some of them are going, she "accepts with pleasure," but if not, the chances are she "regrets." If, on the other hand, she is asked by the Gildings, she accepts at once. Not merely because Golden Hall is the ultimate in luxury, but because Mrs. Gilding has a gift for entertaining, including her selection of people, amounting to genius. On the other hand, Miss Young New York would accept with equal alacrity the invitation of the Jack Littlehouses, where there is no luxury at all. Here in fact, a guest is quite as likely as not to be pressed into service as auxiliary nurse, gardener or chauffeur. But the personality of the host and hostess is such that there is scarcely a day in the week when the motors of the most popular of the younger set are not parked at the Littlehouse door.
People We Love To Stay With
We enjoy staying with certain people usually for one of two reasons. First, because they have wonderful, luxurious houses, filled with amusing people; and visiting them is a period crammed with continuous and delightful experience, even though such a visit has little that suggests any personal intercourse or friendship with one's hostess. The other reason we love to visit a certain house is, on the contrary, entirely personal to the host or hostess. We love the house because we love its owner. Nowhere do we feel so much at home, and though it may have none of the imposing magnificence of the great house, it is often far more charming.
Five flunkeys can not do more towards a guest's comfort than to take his hat and stick and to show him the way to the drawing-room. A very smart young New Yorker who is also something of a wag, says that when going to a very magnificent house, he always tries to wear sufficient articles so that he shall have one to bestow upon each footman. Some one saw him, upon entering a palace that is a counterpart of the Worldlys,' quite solemnly hand his hat to the first footman, his stick to the second, his coat to the third, his muffler to the fourth, his gloves to the fifth, and his name to the sixth, as he entered the drawing-room. Needless to say he did this as a matter of pure amusement to himself. Of course six men servants, or more, do add to the impressiveness of a house that is a palace and are a fitting part of the picture. And yet a neat maid servant at the door can divest a guest of his hat and coat, and lead the way to the sitting-room, with equal facility.
Having several times mentioned Golden Hall, the palatial country house of the Gildings, suppose we join the guests and see what the last word in luxury and lavish hospitality is.
Golden Hall is not an imaginary place, except in name. It exists within a hundred miles of New York. The house is a palace, the grounds are a park. There is not only a long wing of magnificent guest rooms in the house, occupied by young girls or important older people, but there is also a guest annex, a separate building designed and run like the most luxurious country club. The second floor has nothing but bedrooms, with bath for each. The third floor has bachelor rooms, and rooms for visiting valets. Visiting maids are put in a separate third floor wing. On the ground floor there is a small breakfast room; a large living-room filled with books, magazines, a billiard and pool table; beyond the living-room is a fully equipped gymnasium; and beyond that a huge, white marble, glass-walled natatorium. The swimming pool is fifty feet by one hundred; on three sides is just a narrow shelf-like walkway, but the fourth is wide and is furnished as a room with lounging chairs upholstered in white oilcloth. Opening out of this are perfectly equipped Turkish and Russian baths in charge of the best Swedish masseur and masseuse procurable.
In the same building are two squash courts, a racquet court, a court tennis court, and a bowling alley. But the feature of the guest building is a glass-roofed and enclosed riding ring—not big enough for games of polo, but big enough for practise in winter,—built along one entire side of it.
The stables are
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